Sunday, December 07, 2014

I’ve been in the rabbinate for 25 years, and I think it’s high
time we had a conversation about what a Rabbi should be.

A scandal too farfetched for a screenplay has come to light.
A rabbi used a hidden camera to take videos of female conversion candidates undressing
in the mikvah. Nothing could be more abhorrent: a spiritual leader in a spiritual place,
violating the most spiritual moment in a convert’s life.

This scandal is shocking, yet commonplace. There are now so
many rabbinic scandals exposed, from rabbis of all stripes, that there are
special websites devoted to rabbinic scandals. This has shaken me to the core.

There was a time when
I thought Rabbis were special. Rabbis were supposed to be spiritual heroes,
overcoming temptations others could not. Even in the worst moments, one could
depend on rabbinic leadership. Elie
Wiesel said that “in the (concentration) camps, there were kapos…(who were).. former
professors, industrialists, artists, merchants, workers, militants from the
right and the left….. but not one kapo had been a rabbi.”Shouldn’t years of careful spiritual training
change us into giants?

Yes, rabbis have to be special; we are role models, a
living example of what a Torah life should be. The Talmud says one can learn profound
lessons from a rabbi’s idle chatter, and from sitting at the dust of his feet. Rabbis
are meant to be like “an angel of the Lord above”, a man who is part prophet,
part priest.

This image of the superhuman rabbi is one that remains
dominant, even today. Chasidim have a theology of the Tzaddik, a man born with
an extraordinary soul. And even among non-Chasidim, most biographies of great
Rabbis portray them as true angels. These are true hagiographies, meant to
carefully preserve the Rabbi’s image while airbrushing out all faults. Great
rabbis are meant to carry otherworldly wisdom, able to tell us God’s will regarding
electoral politics and real estate deals. When a book is written that speaks
honestly about the imperfections of great rabbis, (like the “The Making of a
Godol”) a controversy erupts. We want our Rabbis to be perfect, to preach
wisely, practice piety and produce miracles.

But sadly, that’s not what happens in real life. There are rabbis
who are cruel to vulnerable converts, and rabbis who are weak, materialistic,
hypocritical and dishonest. Perhaps Wiesel is right that Rabbis rarely became
Kapos, but read the newspapers and you’ll see there are many other vices Rabbis
have fallen into. And even those rabbis who are good people are imperfect. But
we refuse to accept this, and demand perfect role models. (This desire is a universal
phenomenon, one that extends well beyond the Jewish world; even Abraham Lincoln
subscribed to the view that “let us believe…that (George) Washington was
spotless…it makes human nature better to believe that one human being was
perfect”).When you expect perfection
from imperfect people, something will go wrong.

To keep up with the demands of perfection, some rabbis
become “religious politicians”, who use their charm and wit to maintain
popularity, while losing sight of their ideals. Others, intoxicated with the
power of the rabbinate, drink the Kool-Aid and imagine themselves to be God’s
gift to humanity. Both forget who they are, their identity distorted by the
funhouse mirror of religious authority. Sadly, congregants drink the Kool-Aid
as often as the rabbis. Pick up some of the popular rabbinic biographies, and
you’ll even see faults being spun as virtues. One rabbi’s lack of involvement
with his family is seen as the virtue of devotion to Torah study. Another
rabbi’s short temper is considered to be a desire for high standards. A
Rebbetzin’s rejection of vaccinations and interest in homeopathic remedies is
seen as wise rather than dangerous. And of course, if a rabbi is otherwise
respected, his request for “practice dunks” is seen as meticulousness, rather
than something bizarre and disturbing.

Rabbis are not God. Too often, rabbis and congregants
confuse being a role model with being an angel. This attitude is incredibly
unhealthy, and gives license to corruption and superstition.

Actually, one thing I’ve learnt in 25 years in the rabbinate
is that I make mistakes, lots of them. There was the time early in my career,
when I was all set to give a rip-roaring speech one Shabbat about the beauty of
marriage, and had a painful fight with my wife the Friday night before. I
learned that preaching is precarious, and that it’s uncomfortable to talk about
greatness while you are still mediocre yourself; and I imagine virtually every
rabbi, on their own level, struggles with similar issues.

But imperfection doesn’t stop someone from being a role
model; on the contrary, it makes them more relatable. Jacob’s wrestling and
Judah’s repentance make them two of the Bible’s most significant heroes; Akiva
and Reish Lakish become the Talmud’s greatest rabbis, despite their shady
backgrounds. The struggling man of repentance who overcomes his frailties is
the one who achieves the highest level of human greatness.

The rabbis who have inspired me most are the ones who were
willing to admit mistakes, and humbly embraced everyone, no matter who they
were. These rabbis greeted everyone warmly, including the neighborhood nuns,
and made sure the children from the poorest families were treated with the same
respect as everyone else. They were “angels” not because they were perfect, but
because they were sincerely devoted to God’s work.

In the wake of this awful scandal, we should reconsider what
we want in a rabbi. Yes, brilliance, charisma and piety are wonderful, but only
if grounded first in humility and compassion. Before looking for a spiritual leader
who’s an angel, let’s just find one who is a mensch.

Louise Mailloux, the Parti Quebecois’ star
candidate for the riding of Gouin, has some harsh things to say about religion.
She has compared the practice of baptism and circumcision to rape, a remark not
only insulting to Catholics and Jews but also deeply insensitive to rape
victims. And while Mailloux’ remarks are offensive to any religious believer,
her remarks on kosher food cross over into pure bigotry.

Jews are religiously required to eat kosher
food; the rules are laid out in the Bible, where certain animals, birds, fish
and bugs, as well as the combination of milk and meat, are forbidden as
unkosher. While not all Jews keep the kosher laws, those who do can be pretty
particular about their food. Industrial food production techniques make the
observance of the kosher laws far more difficult; the consumer has to puzzle
over mass produced foods that are made of synthetic mixtures, and wonder what the
original raw ingredients were. (Even ordinary consumers are occasionally in for
a shock when they learn what really is in their food; for example, in 2012
Starbucks had to drop a bug-based dye used in Frappuccinos due to consumer
outcry). In North America, multiple
organizations developed to supervise mass produced food products and insure all
ingredients are kosher. They charge companies a fee for the supervision, a fee
many companies are happy to pay in order to expand their consumer market. This
model of supervision is not exclusive to kosher food; similar organizations
certify Gluten Free, Organic and Fair Trade products.

But to Louise Mailloux, something far more
sinister has occurred. She has actively promoted a myth called the “Kosher
Tax”. She has said that kosher supervision is “a religious tax, and it’s a
tax we pay directly to mosques, to synagogues and to religious groups. It’s a
theft.” To her, the observance of Kosher laws is a joke, a money making
scheme, and has remarked that “Just as the prayers of a priest turn bread and wine
into the body and blood of Christ, those of the rabbi turn slaughtered
chickens, Nestlé Quik and ketchup into thousands of dollars.”. To Mailloux, kosher food supervision is a way of conning non-Jews to
pay for Jewish causes, a tax on unsuspecting Quebecois that Jews can use for
their own purposes.

Mailloux is not the first in promoting the
kosher tax canard; it is a libel that has been spread for the last 40 years by
the Klu Klux Klan and anti-Semitic propagandists. It was first offered by the
Richard Butler’s Christian Defense League in 1977, in a pamphlet entitled “Kosher
Food Racket Costs Consumers $Millions”. The “kosher tax” accusation is
attractive to anti-Semites because it implies that Jews are manipulative, money
grubbing con men, taking advantage of innocent non-Jews with their phony kosher
rules. No doubt Ms. Mailloux, with an advanced degree in philosophy, can
understand the implications of her accusations. Yet remarkably enough, Mailloux
continues to campaign without having retracted her remarks. Yes, she has
offered what could only be termed as non-apology apology; that “she never wanted to offend or hurt anyone,….If that has happened, I
very sincerely apologize.” But this so-called apology sounds more like
condescension than contrition, a swipe at the “oversensitivity” of her critics;
and she has made it clear that she stands 100% by her original remarks. And
Pauline Marois has stood by Mailloux, her star candidate, despite these overtly
bigoted remarks.

The PQ is now the only major political
party in North America to tolerate such bigotry. It has made a deal with the
devil, where it hopes identity politics will bring it reelection and even more.
So it has proposed a secular charter, claiming that it needs to regulate the
use of religious symbols in public institutions because they would undermine
the neutrality of the state. Of course, this is asolution to a
problem that doesn't exist, a piece of obvious demagoguery that the PQ hopes will
lead them into the promised land of sovereignty. Pauline Marois cannot pretend
that she doesn’t know that this secular charter will appeal most to xenophobes
and racists. And in affirming their support for Louise Mailloux and her kosher
tax canard, the PQ has taken a stance that David Duke would be proud of.

When medieval Rabbis sought to understand
what distinguished kosher and non-kosher livestock, they noted that animals and
birds that were kosher were not carnivores, and were gentler. These
interpreters theorized that the purpose of the kosher laws was to symbolically
separate man from beings that are exploitative and cruel. The kosher
distinctions are there to teach a lesson about humanity and dignity.

The PQ is making distinctions as well, but
for very different purposes. They are exploiting divisions in Quebec society,
marginalizing Jews, Muslims and even Anglophone university students for
political gain. Shockingly, the PQ is willing to look away while a star candidate
affirms an ugly anti-Semitic canard. It is hard to believe this is happening in
2014.

Perhaps the best way to put it is: there’s
something not quite kosher about the PQ’s tactics. And that is unfortunate for
all Quebecois, Jew and non-Jew alike.

Friday, March 21, 2014

– sermon delivered March
15th. (please note the style is not
written, but much closer to oral remarks)

I generally avoid
political hot topics in sermons, because they generate more heat than light;
and any attempt to introduce nuance is usually ignored. And in particular, I
find it pointless to “preach to the choir” on issues that most of you will
agree with me.

But today, I will break
both of these rules, and talk about the issue of Yeshiva students in the army.
I was inspired to do so after hearing a sermon on the importance of the
“asifa”, the gathering against the Israeli government that was held in New
York. The Rav who gave the sermon is an exceptional Talmid Chacham, and someone
I greatly respect; but his words on this topic were not only unconvincing, they
actually convinced me to speak out for the other point of view on this topic.

The analogy used to
describe the Israeli government’s attempts to enlist Yeshiva students into the
army is that ‘the government will send Yeshiva students to jail for LEARNING
TORAH”. The Israeli government has been equated with Communist Russia, Amalek,
and even the Nazis for this law. And it was this rhetoric that really bothered
me. There is true sinaat chinam, pointless hatred, implicit in making an
analogy that equates Jews you disagree with to the worst anti-Semites in
history; that certainly concerns me. But what is equally disturbing to me in
this entire discussion in the Charedi world is proceeding as if the shitah, the
point of view, of the Hesder Yeshivot doesn’t even exist. Does going to the
army for 17 months mean a person cannot study Torah? Is it impossible to accept
that you can learn and be in the army; that even with army service, Torah can still thrive? The
presentation of one view, and one view only, in all of the Charedi
discussion of army service as if it were Halacha l’Moshe miSinai is
disturbing.

And therefore, I felt I
need to speak to my congregants about this. As the Talmud says:

“When there is a
desecration of God’s name, one does not worry about honoring Rabbis.”

Yes, we must always speak
with civility; the language used by polemicists on both sides is appalling. A
true lover of the Jewish wouldn’t want to cut the Jewish people in half, no
matter what. And if there is one place to begin this discussion, it is with the
caveat that ahavat yisrael must be our guiding principle in all this, and
respectful language is a must, particularly because so many divisions have
opened up over this issue. But I don’t want our civility to be mistaken for a
lack of passion. Our brothers in the Charedi world deserve civility, even if we
disagree absolutely on the topic; but our brothers in the army deserve our
passion, because they put their lives on the line every day so we can have a
country all Jews can call home.

2. Why yeshiva students
must serve in the army

I must begin with some
direct words to frame this discussion. What is remarkable to me is how detached
the exemption of Yeshiva students from army service is from a simple reading of
halacha.

The opinion of Hesder is
based on a simple quote from the Mishnah which says:

For a required war, a war
of survival, one brings the groom from his marital chamber, and the bride from
her chuppah. Even though the Torah explicitly exempts a newlywed man from
battle, in a required war, when the Jewish people face an existential threat,
no one is exempt. Imagine the picture: a war begins, and the groom in his
kittel and the bride in her gown are dragged away immediately. Their honeymoon
is cancelled, their mitzvah of joy is overridden. And the point of the Mishnah
is: there are no exemptions for a required war.

To evade this conclusion,
a multiplicity of explanations as well as several aggadic passages offered to
rationalize the exemption of Yeshiva students from army service. I accept other
people can arrive at other conclusions; what does surprise me is that a psak
based on extremely creative interpretation of sources is treated as if it were
Halacha L’Moshe MiSinai. Here, the disconnect between the basic texts of Torah
Shebaal peh and the Halachic views of the multitude is astounding; people who
would go into shock if a woman read the Megillah for men act as if Hesder
is a bizarre and marginal psak.

The opinion of Hesder is
that the work of the army is the work of hatzalat nefashot, saving lives, the
highest responsibility in Judaism. Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin (1888-1978) argued
that because of this, army service must be first performed by the most pious,
and they should not look for exemptions. He cites the word of Maimonides:

“When such treatment is administered, it should not be delegated
to gentiles, or to (lesser members of the Jewish community) so that they
will not view the Sabbath flippantly. Instead, the treatment should be
administered by the leaders of Israel and the wise.”

Serving in the army is a
critical mitzvah. And like all practical endeavors, one must figure out how to
integrate it with the study of Torah. We are told to find a way to support
ourselves, even though it will take away time from Torah. Indeed, the Talmud
notes that marriage will take time away from Torah study; but we don’t allow
people to remain livelong bachelors, devoted only to Torah. Instead, they
marry, and find a way to integrate Torah with married life.

The view of hesder accepts
that Torah is critical; instead of the normal 3 years of army service, Hesder
students only serve 17 months. As Rav Aharon Lichtenstein put it:

“ Hesder at its finest seeks to attract and develop bnei
torah who are profoundly motivated by the desire to become serious talmidei
hachamim but who concurrently feel morally and religiously bound to help defend
their people and their country; who, given the historical exigencies of their
time and place, regard this dual commitment as both a privilege and a duty;
who, in comparison with their non-hesder confreres love not (to paraphrase
Byron's Childe Harold) Torah less but Israel more.”

Hesder is about accepting
and integrating the value of Torah and the value of klal yisrael.

3. Valuing Service

Perhaps of greater
concern is the creeping suspicion that even the mainstream Charedi community
has decided it is no longer in any way Zionist. Indeed, the Neturei Karta has
used this standoff to make anti-Israel ads, and Lakewood “East” has made a
compact with Satmar. But this was not always the case. Agudah’s representatives
signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence; in the aftermath of the Holocaust,
even those who used to oppose the state now understood it to be a lifeline for
the future of klal yisrael. Yet 70 years later, we forget what history has
taught us too many times. And as Israel has gotten more settled, there
has been a loss of wonderment about the miracle of Israel, and a disregard for the importance of having a Jewish State.

And with it comes a loss
of respect for those who protect and guard Medinat Yisrael. After listening to
all of the arguments against this law, one gets the impression that the simple
soldier, the 18 year old who risks his life for the klal, is no longer
respected.

And that is a tragedy.

I am old enough to
remember a time when Israeli soldier was thanked, for all he did, even by the
greatest of Rabbis. And indeed, many of the gedolim of the previous generation
saw things differently. Rav Ari Kahn writes:

“Among the rabbis who saw things diﬀerently, two come to mind: one was

the military cemetery on Mount Herzl, declared, “Kulam
kedoshim”, “They

are all holy martyrs.” Another is Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach.
When a

student asked the Rabbi’s permission to take a short leave from
the yeshiva

in Jerusalem to travel to pray at the “graves of the righteous,”
Rabbi

Auerbach told him that he need go no further than Mount Herzl,
to the

military cemetery.”

Who are the holy ones to
Rav Gustman and Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach!!!!

Sadly, in all this talk
about Torah study, the mitzvah of saving lives is getting thrown under the bus.
In all the talk about Yeshiva students, the heroic soldiers of the Israeli army
are getting thrown under the bus. And as one segment of the population asks for
an unprecedented exemption from communal responsibility, communal unity is
getting thrown under the bus. The Torah tells us that Moshe exhorts the tribes
of Reuven and Gad and says:

“Will your brothers go to
war and you sit on the other side of the Jordan?”

Fairness is the foundation
of any unified community. And it is a chillul Hashem to act as if Torah allows
you to turn your back on the community. How can anyone deny the psychological
impact that a father whose son has died for the State of Israel feels when he
sees young boys who are exempt from service sitting around and laughing and
drinking coffee? And do we really believe all of these young men in Yeshiva are
truly studying? Can’t at least some of them go and serve?

Yes, perhaps there is no
pressing need today for Yeshiva students in the army. But there will be a need
in the near future, as the Charedi percentage of the population rises. Will a
community that treats the army exemption as sacred be able to change in time
for future circumstances?

4. We can do both

The opinion of hesder is
that one can study Torah and serve his country. The months spent in the army
will not hold one back from progressing in Torah; gedolim every generation have
had their learning interrupted by work, secular studies and even persecution.
With it all, they persevered; and the gemara in brachot remarks that those
Torah scholars who combined learning with mesirut nefesh, self sacrifice, were
all the more better for the experience. And we can see this in the soldiers of
hesder, who continue to learn even while on the front lines. Rabbi Josh Fass,
of Nefesh B'Nefesh wrote about one of these soldiers:

“A few months back, I was meeting an Israeli, in my office in
Jerusalem, regarding a small project. Throughout the meeting, the person across
my desk, was completely lost and preoccupied in his own thoughts. I was
just about to confront him and draw him back into our discussion, when he
looked back at me with tears in his eyes -and stated rather bluntly. My son is
an incredible human being.

Before I had the chance to respond, he continued: My son is 20
years old. He is currently serving in a special elite unit in the IDF. He
spends days on end, over enemy lines, camouflaged, sometimes as a rock, a bush,
a pile of mud – you name it. And every three weeks or so he comes home
for Shabbat exhausted, with those beautiful blue eyes and a pile of laundry.

He continued telling me that that very morning before he left
his home to come to our meeting, his wife was doing the laundry and had to
actually hose down their son’s uniform, before washing it, to remove all of the
caked on mud. And then she discovered something remarkable in the pants
pocket. There was a Gemara, with the hard cover removed so that it could
be easily slipped into the army pants, and a tiny LED light holding the place
of the Daf.

Both parents confronted their son to ask about the Gemara. The
son explained that indeed during the wee hours of the night – (camouflaged as a
rock, a bush, or a pile of mud - he would make sure that he
maintained his steady learning schedule.) He would use the tiniest of lights so
that he would not, God forbid, alert the enemy’s attention to his position.

The stunned parents asked how long had he kept up this practice,
in response to which the young man retrieved a couple of other volumes, both
missing their hardcover’s with the folios stained in mud.

This exceptional soldier, although beyond the boundaries of his
beit midrash, and in truth actually beyond the borders of our country, was
anchored and ensconced in his Torah study.”

If I was organizing a rally,
it would be to pray that the Jewish people can create a few more soldiers like
this young man,; a few more soldiers who reflect a Torat chesed, a Torah combined with the
love for klal yisrael, eretz yisrael and medinat yisrael.

Wednesday, January 08, 2014

The introduction to my speech sounded more like an apology than an endorsement.

I was invited to address a memorial held for Nelson Mandela in Montreal, along with several prominent anti-apartheid activists and leaders in the Black community. When the Master of Ceremonies called me to the podium, he began by saying “you might think it’s strange to invite a Rabbi to speak tonight…”. After all, what would a Rabbi have to do with the anti-apartheid movement? So the MC explained that Mandela had a longstanding and deep relationship with the South African Jewish community, (including many Rabbis), and that including a Rabbi on the program was both understandable and fitting.

But the sad thing is, there are many in the Orthodox community who would consider it strange for an Orthodox Rabbi to speak at a memorial for Nelson Mandela. Some have been preoccupied by Mandela’s support for the Palestinian cause. (Although many, including Abe Foxman, have noted Mandela’s connection to Israel and multiple Israeli leaders.) But in other forums another, uglier attitude has bubbled up to the surface. To these views, Mandela was undeserving of any Orthodox Jew’s attention because Mandela was a lowly black.

Racism is a significant issue in the Orthodox community. In the last two weeks, while away on vacation, I got to visit two different synagogues in New York and Florida. In each, I overheard nasty remarks about blacks. (I get to hear more on vacation than in my own synagogue; in my own synagogue, people are much more guarded about what they say when the Rabbi is around.) Sadly, I cannot dismiss these remarks as outliers. While there are no direct studies on anti-black prejudice in the Orthodox community, anecdotally, there are too many examples to be dismissed. Looking around the internet, from comments on blogs, to videos of well known lecturers, to multiple Facebook posts, one can see numerous examples of racism in the Orthodox community. David Klinghoffer, who was then an editor for the National Review, wrote a two page letter in 1994 to the journal Tradition recounting multiple instances he heard bigoted remarks in the Orthodox community on the Upper West Side. As he put it, “Orthodox bigots express themselves without the concern that anyone present will disagree enough to take offense”. Sadly, things haven’t improved very much in the last twenty years.

Of course the vast majority of Orthodox Jews bear no prejudice. But the fact that a noisy minority can harbor such views is shocking and intolerable, in particular because Orthodox Jews are the last people on earth who should be racists.

A serious believer in the Torah cannot accept racism. Each human is created in the image of God, and has infinite worth. The Mishnah tells us that the reason why Adam is created alone is in order to teach the lesson of equality, so that no man can say “my father is greater than yours”(Sanhedrin 37a). And of course the commandment to “love the stranger because you were strangers in Egypt” (Deteronomy 10:19) which would include a responsibility to any group that is marginalized and oppressed. As Rav Ahron Soloveichik wrote “from the standpoint of the Torah…. any discrimination shown to a human being on account of the color of his or her skin constitutes loathsome barbarity.” The religious imperative to treat people of every color and race equally is beyond dispute.

But what worries me even more about Orthodox racism is how it corrupts the values our community treasures. In this community, where the Yeshiva is the central institution, the intellect is prized and moral sensitivity is treasured. And despite this, people will mindlessly accept something as stupid as racism, the belief that somehow the color of your skin has a correlation to the content of your character. (And if the external attributes matter that much, why just skin color? Why not eye color? Or hair color? Or nose size?) And the same people who can appreciate a Torah insight talking about showing moral sensitivity to everything, even inanimate objects, will then go and treat Blacks worse than dirt. Racism undermines our identity as wise and understanding nation.

Racism is very dangerous. It can destroy the lives of those who are the objects of racism; but it can also destroy the souls of those who are racists. And in the Orthodox community, we need to focus on how racism can destroy our souls.

This is a lesson we can learn from Nelson Mandela. After having sat in prison for 27 years, he refused to respond by hating the white community. He wrote that a “man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness…. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”.
This lesson is one our community needs to move to the forefront, because our souls depend on it. The goal of Judaism is to make a Kiddush Hashem, to sanctify God’s name. But you cannot sanctify God’s name when you mock and mistreat other human beings because they have the wrong skin color.